Grocery stores and liquor stores account for most of the money spent by visitors to large shopping malls in Russia’s European part, the Russian business daily Kommersant reports.
Sampa, the company that manages Sberbank’s shopping malls, found that the share of mall visitors’ spending at grocery stores rose from 22% to 24% over the past year, while the share of non-food purchases fell from 8% to 5% over the same period. The share of spending at food-service outlets fell to 6%. Russia’s state statistics service, Rosstat, recorded the same trend.
Experts polled by the outlet said the growing share of spending on groceries at shopping malls points to declining purchasing power, with consumers shifting their spending toward the most essential categories.
The decline in spending at non-food stores is driving down overall mall turnover, including at grocery stores, the outlet’s sources said.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.